How Should Ecommerce Companies Use Social Media for Marketing

The rapid evolution of social media marketing hasn’t happened randomly or for no reason – it’s an affordable, effective and well-targeted way of promotion that leaves nothing to chance. Being present on social media is a must for all businesses, especially ecommerce companies that are online-based and thus just a click or two away from the users of social networks. A study from 2015 has revealed that an average of 9 percent of total marketing budgets were at the time spent on social media marketing efforts, with the tendency to grow up to 22 percent in the following five years. Here are a few tips on how to invest this money if you’re running an ecommerce business.

Do I have time for this?

Mid to large ecommerce companies that work with over 50 thousand products seem to be under big pressure, because it takes a huge effort to maintain their stocks, track products and take care of customer support. So, does a large ecommerce company have time to conceive and implement social media marketing strategies for such a large number of products?

They just might have. Ecommerce companies today use ecommerce platforms that make it easier for them to take care of their everyday business affairs. They provide a place to offer and sell your products, you can use them to personalize your sales, and they make your life easier when it comes to things like merchandising, pricing and promotions. Furthermore, most ecommerce platforms are integrated with social networks. This makes handling social media promotional campaigns even easier and the results of your campaigns more efficient and easier to track.

Preparation

Before you start employing social media for promoting your business, there are a few things you have to establish. Firstly, who are you addressing? Obviously, your actual and potential customers. You should be more or less aware of who these people are, since you’re expected to know roughly who’s interested in your products. In addition to this, make use of your website’s analytics to check what your most popular products are, which social media generate the most traffic for your website or at what time of the day are your customers the most active.

Moreover, when you’re developing your overall strategy, have in mind that social media marketing is not all about selling, but also about building a community and a sense of trust. This means you need to prepare high-quality content relevant for your area of business that will show people you’re someone who’s an expert and who’s to be trusted on the matter at hand. Of course, people should be aware of the fact that you’re selling something, but don’t be too pushy about this – subtle call-to-action buttons at the end of some of the posts will be enough. Finally, define the way you will be tracking the progress and growth of your pages, in terms of reports and revisions, and which metrics will matter the most to you. Also, having a plan up front on how to react and what to do if things don’t go well can be very helpful if you happen to be out for a slow start.

Putting the strategy to work

The first thing you should have in mind when you actually start creating posts might seem a bit technical but it’s also crucial – optimization. You ought to do a thorough keyword research in order to find out which phrases are the most popular among the people who search for anything related to your business. After that, you can try to use these words often in your posts and help your page grow faster.

As for content, as was already mentioned, your attitude shouldn’t be too salesy. Apart from that, you will have to adapt the content according to your target audience – use the tone and phrases they use, try to be consistent and cover topics relevant to them. Posting relevant and interesting content will naturally generate a bigger reach and engagement, which will in turn spontaneously generate conversions. Don’t be too impatient about this. Nevertheless, if things get much slower than you would ideally want, you can always use paid advertising to give your page a much-needed boost.

You will also have to make sure to post regularly and to pick the right time of day, when your followers and customers are most likely to engage. If you think you’re too busy for this, you can always turn to automation tools. You can use them to schedule your social media activity across different networks. They can be very useful, however if you decide to use some of them, make sure not to go too far with automation and automate only a certain type of content and at certain times – you have to preserve a much-needed touch of authenticity in order to nurture the right type of relationship with your followers.

All in all, the times when social networks were used only to catch up with what your friends are up to or to share funny images are in the past. Today, they are much more and offer an abundance of opportunities to promote your business. Keep in mind that 93 percent of consumers use social media to make buying decisions and try to use that to your advantage, by putting to work a carefully designed social media marketing strategy.